Access to health care may be challenging for people based on the location where they live. For example, a person who lives far from a city may have to spend a prohibitive amount of time to travel to meet with a doctor. Further, even people who live near a city may not have easy access to a desired doctor. For example, a person may need a certain type of specialist who is not present in that city or may desire to meet with a specific doctor in another location.
Access to health care may be facilitated using telemedicine where doctors meet with patients using a phone, videoconference, or other communication techniques made possible by the Internet. In some situations, augmented reality techniques may be used to facilitate communication with a doctor over long distance.
In one example, augmented reality may be used to allow a remote surgeon to assist a local surgeon (local to the patient). Each of the local and remote surgeons may be able to view a video of the surgical site. Another camera may capture the remote surgeon's hand and may superimpose the video of the remote surgeon's hand onto the video of the surgical site. As the remote surgeon moves his hand, this movement may be reflected in the superimposed video, and both the remote and local surgeon may see the remote surgeon's hand in the video. The superimposed video may give the appearance of the remote surgeon interacting with the surgical site even though the remote surgeon may be 1000 miles away.
While telemedicine and augmented reality allow greater access to health care, a remote doctor may be able to provide even better care through additional technologies not provided by current augmented reality systems.